Author: Kathleen Dixon

Giving kids a smartphone or a tablet in order to get them to calm down and leave moms/dads in peace to do home chores is the go to method for many parents out there. It’s not something to be proud of, at least I don’t think it should be. I’ve done it on a couple of occasions, a few years back. Loaded up Candy Crush and watched my kids slowly getting hooked on the game. I quickly realized that I don’t want my kids basically becoming a zombie, so I made a deal with myself. They can have their gadgets, but they have to use only apps that will help them learn, grow and become more curious, instead of just making kid complacent and addicted to crushing candy or whatnot.

Currently one of the more interesting DIY project that I am planning on doing would be the creation of my very own solar panel. Not many people know this, but the actual solar cells, from which solar panels are created, are quite cheap. And they are even more cheaper if you buy broken solar cells in bulk. Broken solar cells are factory defects which have a chip here or there, but they function just fine, with minimum loses of capacity when compared to a whole solar cell. I guess you could call what I do building a DIY solar panel on a budget.

Parents have in the recent years become very hands on with their kids. I guess its a consequence of modern parents having too much free time on their hands, even though you can constantly hear the opposite being said. By having free time, I’m talking about compared to what our parents or even grandparents had. I still remember stories that my mom would tell of how my grandpa, a farmer, would put my mom and her sister in a barrel filled with toys under a tree while grandpa and grandma would work the field. Imagine today’s parents doing something like that. Kids aren’t even allowed to go outside because of fear of scrapes, getting dirty, getting sick, or whatever the current scare craze is.